News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Tag Archives: Southern Poverty Law Center

On Friday, PJ Media posted an article about a group trying to discourage donations to conservative organizations.

The article reports:

On Monday, the first day of the Islamic holy season of Ramadan, the Hamas-linked anti-Israel Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report condemning mainstream charities and philanthropic groups for allowing donors to contribute to conservative organizations CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have accused of being “hate groups” comparable to the Ku Klux Klan. This is particularly rich, as CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-funding case involving the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

The report, “Hijacked by Hate: American Philanthropy and the Islamophobia Network,” lists “philanthropic foundations, many of them mainstream, that were used by anonymous special interest donors to funnel almost $125 million to anti-Muslim hate groups between 2014 and 2016.” CAIR found 1,096 organizations funding 39 groups they accused of fomenting “anti-Muslim hate,” to the tune of $1.5 billion.

CAIR would define an anti-Muslim hate group as any group that tells the truth about the link between those who support Islamic supremacy and terror. Keep in mind that CAIR was one of the groups listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. If you are unfamiliar with the details of that trial, please look at the circumstances of the trial and the government exhibits from the trial. The exhibits outline the plan of Islamic supremacists to use our freedom and our legal system to undermine our government.

The article continues:

“It is our hope that with sustained action, institutional collaboration, and dedicated will, a community of progressive and mainstream allies will emerge to push the Islamophobia Network back to the fringe of our society, where odious and incendiary speech belong,” CAIR National Research and Advocacy Director Abbas Barzegar said.

In addition to slandering and blacklisting conservative groups, the report brands Trump “the Anti-Muslim Hydra,” without explaining the use of the term “hydra.” This invective may suggest Trump’s administration is a monster, which grows three more heads for every severed head, or it may link the Trump administration to the fictional organization Hydra from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an organization which was too radical even for the Nazis.

To their shame, some of the charitable foundations said they took the report “very seriously.” Schwab Charitable told NPR that its direction of funding is done by individuals and does not “reflect the values or beliefs of Schwab, Schwab Charitable or its management.” Even so, the fund insisted that it “does not condone hate groups and we take concerns about illegitimate activity by grant recipients seriously.” It encouraged people to contact the IRS or state charity regulators if the “anti-Muslim hate groups” broke any laws.

Keep in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood managed to purge all references to radical Islam from our government briefings on terror during the term of Barack Obama. Now CAIR is going after conservative groups because conservative groups understand who CAIR is and understand CAIR’s relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In February, Judicial Watch reported that a group of illegal aliens working in a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in East Tennessee were arrested by ICE agents. These illegal aliens, aided by the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC), are suing the federal agents that arrested them.

The article reports:

Represented by an extremist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations on a catalogue of “hate groups,” seven illegal immigrants detained in a workplace raid are suing the federal agents that arrested them, claiming that they were racially profiled for being Latino. In a federal court complaint filed this week by their pro bono attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the illegal aliens assert that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated their Constitutional rights against illegal seizures and to equal protection under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The raid occurred last spring at a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in a small rural town called Bean Station in east Tennessee. Agents from ICE and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided the facility as part of a lengthy investigation into the owner’s multi-million-dollar tax evasion and fraud scheme. About 100 illegal aliens were arrested, most of them from Guatemala and Mexico and some had been previously deported from the U.S. more than once. At least 54 people were deported immediately, some were released and others faced federal or state charges, according to a local news report following the seize.

The owner of the business, James Brantley, eventually pled guilty to multiple federal crimes, including tax fraud, wire fraud, and employment of unauthorized illegal aliens. The feds say he avoided paying nearly $1.3 million in taxes by hiring at least 150 illegal aliens and paying them off the books in cash. The scheme began in 1988 and continued through 2018 when he got busted. Brantley had reported to the IRS that he had only 44 wage-earning employees, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). To avoid Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax obligations, unemployment insurance premiums, unemployment tax and workers’ compensation insurance premiums he paid illegal immigrants in cash at a rate of $8-$10 per hour.

Since when do illegal aliens have constitutional rights–they are not American citizens, and they are breaking the law by being here.

The article also states:

Leftist groups went ballistic, asserting that illegal immigrants were victims whose “rights” were violated by the federal government. Outraged, the SPLC called it the largest workplace immigration raid since the George W. Bush administration. “What happened on April 5, 2018 was law enforcement overreach, plain and simple,” said the group’s senior supervising attorney Meredith Stewart. “We, as a nation, have a shared set of ideals, rooted in the Bill of Rights: We have a right to be free of racial profiling and unlawful arrests. If we are not willing to uphold those ideals for everyone in this country, then we are all at risk of losing our rights.” In the complaint, SPLC attorneys write that the federal officers conspired to plan and execute the forceful and prolonged seizure of the meatpacking plant’s Latino workforce solely on the basis of their actual or apparent race or ethnicity.

If the workers were here illegally, why would anyone characterize the arrests as unlawful? Isn’t it lawful to arrest people who break the law?

I hope a judge throws this case out of court. The person running the business was breaking the law by hiring the illegals, but the illegals were also illegal. They are not protected by the U.S. Constitution. Does anyone believe that if they entered Mexico illegally that they would be under the protection of the Mexican constitution?

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the Nation of Islam has received $364,500 in contracts and awards from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2019.

The article reports:

The funding was designed to provide “Nation of Islam religious services,” “Nation of Islam spiritual guide services,” “Nation of Islam study services,” and other related programming led by the organization’s leaders, according to Bureau of Prison records. The Nation of Islam has been labeled a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It scares me that I agree with the Southern Poverty Law Center on anything, but in this case they are right. The Nation of Islam is led by Louis Farrakhan. Some of his teaching states that white people are “blue-eyed devils” and Jews are “the synagogue of Satan.” That is not a message that is helpful to anyone.

The article further reports:

In total, the Bureau of Prisons contracted with over a dozen organizations and individuals to specifically provide Nation of Islam programming for inmates. One of these individuals was Verbon Muhammad, a Nation leader in Monroe, La., who received over $60,000 to “provide Nation of Islam religious services.” Muhammad told a reporter at the Louisiana News Star last year that white people are not allowed to attend Nation of Islam religious services.

“We don’t allow white people in our meetings, period,” said Muhammad.

There is a concern that chaplains in our prisons are not helping inmates in their journey to be productive citizens.

The article reports:

King (New York Republican Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence) said the funding raises concerns about the federal vetting process for prison chaplains in light of reports that prisons can be a breeding ground for radicalization.

In 2010, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report that found “as many as three dozen U.S. citizens who converted to Islam while in prison have traveled to Yemen, possibly for Al Qaeda training.” The issue has drawn recent attention in Europe, after a gunman who attacked visitors at a Christmas market in France was reported to have been radicalized during a prior stint in jail.

“Since there have been too many instances of radicalization occurring in prisons, that, to me, is a public concern as to what is being taught,” King said. “To me, once you’re associated with Farrakhan, that, to me, would end the vetting right away.”

It’s time to reevaluate our prison chaplain program to see if it is helping prisoners to become productive citizens or creating people that will not exist peacefully in society.

Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line today about the appointment of Fred Fleitz as chief-of-staff of the National Security Council. The smear campaign against a good man has begun. Yesterday the Washington Monthly posted an article calling Fred Fleitz a Neo-Nazi. He is not a neo-Nazi–but he is a man who understands the threat of radical Islam. They describe him as the anti-Muslim senior vice-president of an Islamaphobic think tank and now NSC chief of staff. The think tank they are referring to is the Center for Security Policy headed by Frank Gaffney. The Center for Security Policy has been one of the few honest sources for information on Sharia Law and the attempts to infiltrate Sharia into our government. They are described as Islamaphobic just as anyone who understands the threat of Sharia extremists in America is described.

The article at Power Line concludes:

The previous administration did not take the danger seriously. Or maybe it just couldn’t discern an Islamic radical group when it saw one.

Adam Kredo of the Washington Examiner argues that members of the Obama administration are instrumental in the slander of Fleitz. He notes that “organizations closely tied to the Obama administration” have led the charge. Kredo cites the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also includes or Anti Defamation League which is currently headed by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama administration official.

Desperate to defend Obama’s major legacy item — the Iran nuclear deal — Team Obama has a strong interest in bringing down John Bolton and Fred Fleitz, as it brought down Michael Flynn. But CAIR, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and even the Washington Post aren’t the FBI. These outfits are just shouting into the wind. But that doesn’t make some of the shouting any less despicable.

There are many places in our government that need to be revamped after the damage done by the last presidential administration. The National Security Council is one of those places. The appointment of Fred Fleitz is definitely a step in the right direction.

Amazon’s spokesperson declined to comment to TheDCNF on the eligibility status of individual organizations but stressed the diversity of the more than one million participants in the program.

ISNA is listed as an unindicted co conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial which began in July 2007. The Holy Land Foundation Trial dealt with groups funding money to Islamic terrorists. These are the people Amazon is allowing to participate in their charity programs while keeping Christian organizations out. This is definitely backwards.

The SPLC report, which still exists in PDF form, was first published in December 2016 and was intended to be a resource for journalists. It reads, “A shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.”

Maajid Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam Foundation in London, said on a podcast with Joe Rogan that the report was taken down under legal threat in the past few days.

Nawaz said, “We have retained Clare Lock, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it – the Southern Poverty Law Center – and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years.”

The problem with the SPLC’s hate map is that anyone who disagreed with the liberal agenda is listed as a hate group and anything said against the liberal agenda as hate speech. The people who have spoken out honestly against Sharia Law and the attempts to bring it to America have been charged with hate speech. Telling the truth is characterized as hate speech according to the SPLC. This is reminiscent of the purging of the Department of Homeland Security of documents related to terrorism (article here):

In October 2011, elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism. The letter was addressed to John Brennan, who at the time was Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Days later John Brennan agreed to create a task force to address the problem by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.” This move in effect allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to control the information given to the people charged with stopping the terrorism initiated by groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point, the 9/11 reports and other actual historic documents were altered to make them compliant with the new paradigm. (I thought only the Russians rewrote history.)

The Center for Security Policy article concludes:

Family Research Council Executive Vice President General Jerry Boykin denounced the SPLC as “probably one of the most evil groups in America. They’ve become a money-making machine and they’ve become an absolute Marxist, anarchist organization.”

The SPLC website says “The organizations on our hate group list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity – prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines.”

The SPLC did not respond to a question why they have removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists”.

America’s future security depends on an informed public. Organizations like the SPLC misinform the public about the dangers around them. Meanwhile some forces within our government work to prevent law enforcement from having the information they need to protect us. If Americans do not wake up, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren how we lost their freedom.

On Monday, The Daily Caller Reported that the Department of Defense has cut its ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Previously the SPLC was regarded as a source when identifying hate groups. Unfortunately, the SPLC has degenerated into a liberal mouthpiece citing any conservative group that supports traditional values as a hate group.

The article reports:

Brian J. Field, assistant U.S. attorney from the Civil Division, stated that the Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), in an email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation from the Department of Justice.

The DEOMI is a DOD school founded to fight segregation and inequality that teaches courses in racial, gender and religious equality, among other subject areas like equal opportunity and pluralism. The courses are available to DOD civilians and service members.

The article concludes:

The Pentagon’s decision to terminate its relationship with the SPLC comes at a time when the group has under major fire from conservative organizations, particularly in the form of lawsuits. D. James Kennedy Ministries, a Christian ministry from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., recently sued the SPLC after being labeled a hate group. The SPLC has also faced criticism from liberals. In late August, anti-Muslim extremism activist and feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued in The New York Times that “the S.P.L.C. is an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism.”

For Ali, corporations and donors in Hollywood “need to find more trustworthy and deserving partners to work with than the SPLC.”

Notably, the Pentagon is not the only federal agency to drop the SPLC.

In February, The Daily Caller News Foundation published an exclusive piece indicating that the FBI, which formerly used the SPLC as a “hate crimes resource,” has also been distancing itself from the group.

It would be nice to have an unbiased source to keep track of hate groups, but I am not convinced that is possible. We have had the obvious hate groups with us for a long time–white supremacists, black panthers, and others. It is time simply to marginalize these groups and begin to unite as a country. Hopefully this is possible.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been linked to two shootings in Washington. The shooting at the Family Research Council in 2012 was linked to the SPLC having declared them a hate group and there were some questions as to whether the gunman who shot Steve Scalise was influenced by the SPLC. At any rate, when we start declaring organizations hate groups, we need to be careful. The problem with declaring groups hate groups or speech hate speech is that it involves very subjective judgement on the part of the person making the declaration.

The SPLC has every right to exist and state their views. It is the responsibility of those who hear those views to do their own research and draw their own conclusions. As Dr. Swain noted, the SPLC has done nothing for the poor. So what is their actual purpose? Based on their past performance, it appears that their only goal is to create problems between races rather than to solve them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has declared three of America’s largest Army bases Confederate monuments “with the potential to unleash more turmoil and bloodshed” if activists don’t “take down” the Army bases.

The list makes no mention of renaming namesakes of Confederate monuments; taking the monuments down is presented as the only option. The recent leftist campaign against Confederate namesakes and monuments has included a willingness among some far-left actors to destroy government property to accomplish their goals.

If the SPLC is so unhappy with American history and the American government, why don’t they take their organization elsewhere? Nothing they are doing is improving the atmosphere of division and hate that they say they are combating. In fact, it can be argued that this ‘anti-hate group’ is creating hate and division.

The article notes:

At the same time that the SPLC is waging its campaign against Fort Hood, approximately 400 American soldiers stationed at the base are down in Houston helping victims of Hurricane Harvey.

Last week I posted an article about a donation given to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) by George and Amal Clooney. The donation was made in response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was given ‘to combat hate groups. As I explained in the article, according to the SPLC, a hate group is any group of people who do not share the same beliefs as the SPLC. That is the danger of designating hate groups–there may be a few we all agree on, but there is also a lot of room for disagreement.

PJ Media posted an article yesterday reporting that the SPLC is being sued by some of the groups it has designated as hate groups.

But the SPLC does not deserve this widespread trust, support, and publicity. The organization is a “cash-collecting machine” that spreads libels against religious organizations and has been connected to two domestic terror attacks.

There have been two domestic terror attacks that have connections to the SPLC. The first was the shooting of Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.) early this summer (James Hodgkinson had liked the SPLC on Facebook. The SPLC had attacked Representative Scalise for giving a speech to a white supremacist group.) The second attack occurred in 2012 when Floyd Lee Corkins III broke into the Family Research Council (FRC), aiming to kill everyone in the building. The article reports that during an FBI interrogation, the shooter said he targeted FRC because it was listed as an “anti-gay group” on the SPLC website.

In the video announcing his lawsuit, Nawaz declared that “placing my name on a list like this not only smears my name, but also puts me in physical danger.” He noted that “the Left has descended into violence, whether that’s punching people on the street, throwing explosives and attacking people in protests and riots or assassination attempts on Right-wing politicians by leftist fans of the SPLC.”

Whatever their intention was at their inception, the SPLC has become a political hate group that has discovered a way to make money through lawsuits and gifts from people who want to feel good about ‘combating hate.’ It is my hope that a few lawsuits will convince them to find other ways of making a living.

Please follow the link above to the PJ Media article. It is chilling that an organization that claims to be fighting hate can be so misused by the political left. At the moment, the SPLC is being used as a weapon to stifle Christian beliefs and conservative speech. That is not a direction America should be moving in.

There are a few problems with this. The headline of the article reads, “George and Amal Clooney give $1 million to combat U.S. hate groups.” Actually the SPLC is in itself a hate group. That is the problem when you start labeling hate groups–one man’s political action group is another man’s hate group.

The group consistently lists Act for America as a hate group. It is not. The group was founded by Brigitte Gabriel to educate Americans to the threat of Islam. Ms. Gabriel was knighted in Europe in 2016 for her international work on fighting terrorism and standing up for Western Values. The SPLC also lists a number of Christian organizations as hate groups because these groups hold a Biblical view of homosexuality. The SPLC has no respect for a group that believes in the Bible and attempts to follow Biblical principles.

The SPLC is nothing more than a liberal group attempting to limit the free speech of people who do not agree with them. Contributing to this group does not fight hate in any way–in fact it supports people who do not believe in the freedoms guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, there are many people who will be taken in by the SPLC’s claim that they are working to fight ‘hate groups.’

Yesterday Infowars posted an article about some changes the Department of Justice is making in fighting the war on terror at home. I think fighting the war on terror at home is a really good idea–particularly since we have no way of vetting the refugees from Syria that the United Nations is sending us (rightwinggranny). However, I guess the Department of Justice does not necessarily see things the same way I do.

The article reports:

The DOJ announced it will appoint a “domestic terrorism counsel” to focus on who the Obama administration and the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center considers “extremists.”

“Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that domestic terrorists and homegrown violent extremists remain a real and present danger to the United States,” the DOJ’s John Carlin said on Wednesday.

Even more concerning, the MIAC report encouraged law enforcement to scrutinize Americans who oppose abortion, illegal immigration and the rapid growth of the government, all of which are views shared by a plurality of Donald Trump supporters.

I guess we have come to the point where not totally agreeing with the Democratic Party agenda puts you under suspicion as a ‘domestic terrorist.’ Meanwhile the Justice Department is ignoring the obvious threat that is currently invading our country, both as legal refugees and illegal aliens. At some point I hope the voters in America will hold these people accountable for what they are doing–they are not only putting our national security at risk, they are creating divisions among Americans that weaken us as a nation, This is not the way to bring America together.

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that the U. S. Army is ordering a halt to all briefings classifying Christian groups as domestic hate groups. Yes, you read that right. The army needs a memorandum to stop teaching soldiers that Christians are a domestic terrorism threat. Good grief! A memorandum sent out by the Secretary of the Army, John McHugh ordered all Army leaders “to cease all briefings, command presentations, or training on the subject of extremist organizations and activities, pending promulgation” of a uniform instruction and training program.

The irony of this, of course, is that an SPLC law center map was used by Floyd Lee Corkins to find the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., where his goal was to shoot as many people as possible. Thank God he was stopped by a security guard that he did shoot.

The First Amendment protects our religious freedom. Our military takes an oath to protect and defend our Constitution. Our training memos and lectures should reflect that oath.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians–including chaplains–sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of “treason,” and of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are “enemies of the Constitution.”)

Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has committed a crime under federal military law. Punishment for a court martial can include imprisonment and being dishonorably discharged from the military.

How in the world did we get to this place? This new regulation also includes military chaplains. Why are they there if they can’t share their faith?

If you are concerned about this violation of our soldiers’ rights, please follow this link to the Family Research Council to sign the petition protesting this new regulation. We need to protect the religious freedom of our troops.

On a historical note, I would like to include this picture which was posted by a friend on facebook:

Somewhere we have gone horribly astray.

UPDATE: A website called Instant Analysis posted the following today:

UPDATE (May 2, 2013 – 1:30 p.m. Central) – The Pentagon is backing down on a Tuesday statement indicating members of the military could be subject to court-martial for religious proselytizing.

The Department of Defense has issued a new statement, saying that “Service members can share their faith, or evangelize, but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs.”

On Tuesday it was revealed that Lt. Commander Nate Christensen issued a statement on behalf of the Pentagon that court-martials for “proselytizing” would be considered on a case-by-case basis. The statement outraged the Christian community, including current and former members of the armed services.

The question arose as to whether members of the military lose their First Amendment rights at the point at which they enter the military.

– See more at: http://www.instantanalysis.net/latest-headlines-from-american-family-news/2013/05/02/report-court-martials-may-await-soldiers-who-share-their-christian-faith#.UYLPuIWEX-s.facebook